What is the financial effect of Pokemon Go?

Pokemon Go is the most popular thing in the world.

If you haven’t heard of Pokemon Go yet than you’re probably living under a rock. So if you’re living under a rock and don’t already know; Pokemon Go is quite possibly the biggest fad? Trend? Phenomenon? I’ve seen in my life time. Definitely one of the most visual ones. Ever since it was launched I’ve been seeing articles popping up everywhere online. Then when it was launched in Canada I couldn’t avoid it.

In the last week I’ve seen hundreds of people playing Pokemon Go at all hours of the day. Everyone has seen at least several news articles on it. Most of them are about a player that had something happen to them that happens to thousands of people each day. Now because the news can relate it to Pokemon Go it’s now a “story” or hoped to be a viral piece. Right now it seems like everyone is either playing it or trying to relate their product to it for the extra publicity they’re hoping to cash in on. I even saw a fire department put it to good use among many other great ads.

Ok, so why are you writing about it?

Well…one there’s always the hope in publicity, but this will mostly just be shared by friends and family and might educate them as to why I’m always staring at my phone walking around outside. Also I did a lot of reading into the effect Pokemon Go is having on numerous things and wanted to share some of them with you. After all, this is MY blog…

Financially, here’s some of the impacts.

Let’s start at the beginning, July 6, 2016. That’s the date Pokemon go was release in the first markets, Australia, USA, and the European Union. Within 13 hours it topped the highest grossing mobile game chart and has been there ever since with no sign of slowing down. I don’t think they’ve really even touched on monetizing the app except for the obvious in app purchases. You can pay real money for pokecoins to spend on items to help catch Pokemon but that just scratches the surface and they could do so much more. Just a few days ago MacDonald’s became it’s first corporate partner in Japan, where upon it’s launch 400 MacDonald’s stores were in game Pokemon Gyms. This will probably see a pretty incredible boost to sales at those stores compared to the others in the country as now you’ll have so many more people dropping in to play the game and probably purchasing food.

Pokemon Go has also been able to drive consumers to businesses, now that so many more people are spending more time walking around I’ve read a few players commenting that they now plan meals around their walking routes to hit all the Pokestops. Most of these players would just be playing video games on their couches and not spending their money in stores. Although to be fair, it’s probably just the delivery drivers losing out here…

As of writing this article Nintendo’s stock was up 65% from July 6th. Just a few days ago on July 16th it hit a 5 year high at $38.25 which was up 117% from July 6th’s opening price…Wish I saw that coming! But what a perfect example of why you invest for the long term, all of those buyers on July 16th bought at the top of a huge speculative jump, currently they’re down almost 25%. This could continue to grow but it could level off for the next several years as well. We’ll never actually know how high or low the stock will go based on the app.

Speaking of speculation…

Pokemon Go could affect the world financially in so many ways other than Nintendo’s stock price. With 23 million active users and thousands downloading each minute in JUST the US alone we could end up with a generation of slightly healthier people. You need to walk 10 km(6 miles for you Americans) to hatch eggs for the rarer Pokemon which people are actively doing. I personally have probably walked/jogged a minimum of 3 km each day while playing for an hour with my peak so far being just 7.6 km. This could go either way with healthcare, which here in Canada it’s free, so we could see a lot more strain on our system with people over exerting themselves as I’m sure you know video gamers aren’t known for our endurance with standing, except maybe those Dance Dance Revolution fanatics… Or it could have the beneficial effect and hopefully make everyone a bit healthier, our necks will still curve down from looking at the screens, but damn we’ll be able to walk until those eggs hatch!

I’m also a little skeptical of the health benefits as major cities have densely packed pokestops so people don’t have to walk far to get them. Then there’s the smaller towns where you have to walk/jog a kilometer between a lot of stops like my place of work seen below…

A few other financial effects…

With all trends there’s bound to be a few spin offs in the form of actuall businesses. Think back to 2004 where you never heard the word Zumba before in your life, now those classes are offered in every gym. Speaking of gyms, how many crossfit gyms are there now? So I bet you’re thinking there’s maybe real life Pokemon gyms now after those examples? Nope, but there are Pokemon Go pubcrawls which would be my favorite way to exercise, by stumbling to new bars each hour. (On a side note, I wonder if there were Macarena dance classes back in the 90s when that was popular…can anyone answer that? I would have been too young to care)

There are actually hundreds of examples I could list of people taking advantage of the Pokemon Go craze but this article can only be so long! Maybe I’ll revisit this if it goes strong for 6 months or a year but for now I’ll leave you with a few quick facts:

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2 comments

Nintendo’s stock has gotten a lot of attention. But Apple should benefit from the Pokemon Go craze as well. For every dollar someone spends on the game in the App store about 30 cents go to Apple and only 10 cents go to Nintendo. I’m only level 8 right now. I picked Valor but none of my Pokemon are strong enough to actually battle yet lol. Most people at my local gyms are like level 20+. What level and team are you on?Liquid recently posted…Higher Education

Very true, with Pokemon Go just passing $200million in revenue through Apple in it’s first month I’d say Apple is certainly going to enjoy this success.

I picked Valor as well! It seems like there’s a Valor vs Mystic rivalry everywhere I go, hardly any Instinct members it seems. I’m at level 18 right now but i think that will really slow down. On my days off i get to play it quite a bit as two of them are weekdays and most people are working so i wander around downtown Calgary for a few hours visiting pokestops. But i go ten day stretches at work so I might get a level out of that. I saved up all of my evolutions and evolved about 50 pokemon in one run with a lucky egg and jumped a few levels. I’d highly recommend that if you haven’t heard of that method yet.Stephen recently posted…What is the financial effect of Pokemon Go?